This neighborhood north of Davenport Road was established by landscape painter Marmaduke Matthews, who was employed for a time by the Canadian Pacific Railway to depict landscapes. Matthews built the community’s first home in 1874 on a four-hectare plot, and named it after Wychwood Forest in Oxfordshire, England, near his birthplace. In 1877 businessman Alexander Jardine built a home called Braemore on a five-hectare plot nearby. Seeking to establish an artists’ colony, the two men purchased additional land and created a plan for a residential community in 1888. A second plan, utilizing smaller lots and including a communal park, was officially registered in 1891. Taddle Creek flowed through the park from the north, and its waters were dammed to form a pond (restored in 1998).
The private community is entered from the north on Tyrrel Avenue, while a gate to the south permits access to Davenport Road. Hidden from the gaze of outsiders, some 60 homes are laid out on irregular lots established by the plan of 1891, which also originally governed architectural standards and prohibited row houses and commercial structures. Most of the homes were built in the early twentieth century, and predominately in the Arts & Crafts style. Some were designed by architect Arthur Edwin Whatmough, (who also built tennis courts within the park) and others by Eden Smith, who built his own home in the community in 1907. The homes are set among mature red oaks and white oaks, many of which antedate the settlement of York. Amalgamated with the City of Toronto in 1909, Wychwood Park was designated a Heritage Conservation District under the Ontario Heritage Act in 1985.
